A radiological or a nuclear incident or accident could not only cause a catastrophic effect on public safety and health, but also have a devastating effect on a nation's economy and security. Efforts should be made for preparedness so that the adverse impact can be mitigated. During a radiological or nuclear emergency, a laboratory's capacity for analyzing a large number of samples and providing timely reliable laboratory analytical results are critical for consequence management decision making. The challenge for field examination in the subject area of radionuclide analysis is that in-depth expertise is required for performing analytical procedures, timely interpretation of data, and ensuring data quality; however, this type of in-depth expertise is only possessed by a limited number of radio-analytical personnel.
Prior art systems of identification for remote objects by detecting gamma-ray, X-ray and neutron radiations are known; however, none of these prior art systems provide any type of capability of identifying and quantifying gamma-ray emitting radionuclides with implementable and required features, such as predetermined thickness and material of the shield, taking into account the required detection limit and practical data acquisition time, necessary data quality objectives to meet the needs for regulatory, or emergency event consequence management decision making. Furthermore, none of the prior art systems provides realistic features to enable field portability and allow non-requirements of gamma-ray spectroscopy knowledge and experience of a field end user, while achieving the data quality objectives required for regulatory and emergency consequence management decision making.
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